[Chyzwar]

These should work fine,

  - install 32bit Linux distro with lightweight DE
  - disable mitigations, experiment with zram/swapp off
  - install 32bit versions of IntelliJ and Chrome. 

As long, they limit the number of tabs in chrome and use low resolutions screens, they should be fine. If you could upgrade RAM to 8GB and add SSDs these would be decent machines.

I am typing this from i5 2500K from 2011 and work great for me. In most cases it is snappier than my work machine. At the very least, you should try.